Will Hurd

The Entire Republican Party Owns Trump’s Crimes Going Forward

Both articles of impeachment just passed Congress, with the only non-partisan votes coming from Justin Amash (voting yes on both), Tulsi Gabard (voting present on both), Jeff Van Drew and Collin Peterson (no on both) and Jared Golden (who split his vote). In spite of a pretty damning speech about Republican lack of courage from Steny Hoyer, no Republican had the courage to support the Constitution.

President Trump will be shown to have committed more crimes, even more grievous ones than withholding duly appropriate aid to cheat in an election. It probably won’t be that long from now. And the entire Republican party will own those crimes.

The Republican party favors cheating over the national security of the United States.

Amy Berman Jackson Disputes Claims of “Exculpatory” Information on Russia and Ukraine

For all its import showing the problems with Carter Page’s FISA application, I’ll eventually show the DOJ IG Report  commits some of the same errors of inclusion and exclusion of important information that it accuses FBI of. Most importantly, it treats as exculpatory comments that George Papadopoulos made to Stephan Halper and another informant in fall 2016 when the FBI agents involved rightly (the record now confirms) suspected Papadopoulos’ answer was a cover story. Notably, Rosemary Collyer did not include the Papadopoulos comments in her letter to the government yesterday, suggesting she doesn’t think exclusion of those comments to be noteworthy.

Given Michael Horowitz’s focus on FBI’s withholding of exculpatory information (which they absolutely did, on a number of occasions), I find the focus of Amy Berman Jackson’s comments at Rick Gates’ sentencing hearing yesterday notable. (Thanks to CNN for culling these comments from the transcript.)

Some of the comments — including some focusing on Ukraine — seemed targeted at Republicans debating impeachment. For example, she emphasized that Gates’ information was not hearsay, and it implicated individuals associated with Ukraine and Russia.

Mr. Gates provided information — not hearsay, but information — based on his personal knowledge, meetings he attended, conversations in which he was a participant and information that was verified with contemporaneous records of numerous, undeniable contacts and communications between individuals associated with the presidential campaign, primarily but not only Manafort, and individuals associated with Russia and Ukraine.

ABJ likely recognizes, as I have emphasized, that Paul Manafort’s August 2, 2016 meeting with Konstantin Kilimnik and its aftermath — including his booking $2.4 million from pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs eight days later — represents a clearcut case of Ukraine interfering in the 2016 election.

She also takes a shot at those claiming there was no basis for the investigation into Russia, and suggests that obstruction successfully prevented prosecutors from charging the underlying coordination.

Gates’ debriefings, his multiple incriminatory bits of evidence on matters of grave and international importance are a reminder that there was an ample basis for the decision makers at the highest level of the United States Department of Justice — the United States Department of Justice of this administration — to authorize and pursue a law enforcement investigation into whether there was any coordination between the campaign and the known foreign interference in the election, as well as into whether there had been any attempt to obstruct that investigation, and to leave no stone unturned, no matter what the prosecutors determined they had evidence to prove at the end of that investigation.

And she emphasizes that pursuing this investigation was critical for election security.

Gates’ information alone warranted, indeed demanded, further investigation from the standpoint of our national security, the integrity of our elections and the enforcement of our criminal laws.

But there’s a line in here that seems directed at the discussion surrounding the IG Report.

One cannot possibly maintain that this was all exculpatory information. It included firsthand information about confidential campaign polling data being transmitted at the direction of the head of the campaign to one of those individuals to be shared with Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs.

The investigation into whether Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia in its election interference started 3 days before Roger Stone spoke to Trump about how to optimize the WikiLeaks releases. It started 5 days before Trump’s campaign manager met with Konstantin Kilimnik to explain how he planned to win the investigation, discussed carving up Ukraine to Russia’s liking (an effort Manafort pursued for over a year afterwards), and how to get paid by his Ukrainian and Russian paymasters. It started 11 days before Manafort booked $2.4 million in revenues — to be received in November — from his Ukrainian paymasters.

Again, ABJ has seen more of the underlying evidence from this investigation than anyone. And she sure seems to think that Bill Barr, Donald Trump, and Michael Horowitz are dismissing the seriousness of this investigation.

Rosemary Collyer Responds to the DOJ IG Report in Fairly Blasé Fashion

Judge Rosemary Collyer just released a four page order responding to the DOJ IG Report showing problems with Carter Page’s FISA applications.

Before I explain the letter further, let me just explain for those who haven’t followed my FISA work. Collyer is the presiding judge of the court. Traditionally, it falls to the presiding judge to scold DOJ when things go haywire, and so it was to be expected that Collyer would write this. Collyer is nowhere near the most aggressive presiding judge in the court’s history (that honor might go to Reggie Walton, though Royce Lamberth was presiding when the Woods Procedures that weren’t followed here were introduced after he bitched about systematic problems). As an example, she wrote what I consider to be among the worst programmatic FISA opinions not written by a Dick Cheney flunkie, and she was reluctant to implement the new amicus mandated by Congress in the USA Freedom Act.

Predictably, while this is a sharp opinion, it’s not that onerous. She starts by spending a page explaining why candor is so important for the FISC, language that is probably for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the court. She cites three prior opinions complaining about lack of candor, just one of which I consider among the greatest hits.

She then reviews the problems laid out in the IG Report she considers most important, citing:

  • The failure to explain Carter Page’s past relationship with the CIA
  • Exaggerations about the degree to which Christopher Steele’s reporting had been corroborated
  • Contradictions of Steele’s claims made by his sub-source
  • Page’s denials he had worked closely with Paul Manafort
  • Page’s denials he knew the two Russians described in the Steele dossier
  • Details suggesting claims attributed to Sergei Millian in the dossier were unreliable

In addition, Collyer dedicates a paragraph to describing Kevin Clinesmith’s alteration of an email to hide Page’s prior CIA relationship, alluding to a prior order in which she seems to have ordered a review of everything he had touched.

In addition, while the fourth electronic surveillance application for Mr. Page was being prepared, an attorney in the FBI’s Office of General Counsel (OGC) engaged in conduct that apparently was intended to mislead the FBI agent who ultimately swore to the facts in that application about whether Mr. Page had been a source of another government agency. See id. at 252-56. The information about the OGC attorney’s conduct in the OIG report is consistent with classified submissions made to the FISC by the government on October 25, 2019, and November 27, 2019. Because the conduct ofthe OGC attorney gave rise to serious concerns about the accuracy and completeness of the information provided to the FISC in any matter in which the OGC attorney was involved, the Court ordered the government on December 5, 2019, to, among other things, provide certain information addressing those concerns.

In addition to ordering the declassification of that December 5 order, Collyer also ordered the FBI to explain, by January 10, what they’re going to do to fix the more general problem.

THEREFORE, the Court ORDERS that the government shall, no later than January 10, 2020, inform the Court in a sworn written submission of what it has done, and plans to do, to ensure that the statement of facts in each FBI application accurately and completely reflects information possessed by the FBI that is material to any issue presented by the application. In the event that the FBI at the time of that submission is not yet able to perform any of the planned steps described in the submission, it shall also include (a) a proposed timetable for implementing such measures and (b) an explanation of why, in the government’s view, the information in FBI applications submitted in the interim should be regarded as reliable.

So she’s not calling for the FISC itself to do anything different. FBI will likely provide a plan implementing the FISC-based recommendations made by Michael Horowitz, as well as additional updates to the Woods Procedures.

This is, in the grand scheme of things, an order deferring to the government to fix the problem, not an order designed to impose new requirements (of the kind Lamberth himself ordered years ago) from the court until FBI proves it has cleaned up its act.

Which leaves it up to Congress to impose any more substantive fixes.

Horowitz

A Biased FBI Agent Was Running an Informant on an Oppo-Research Predicated Investigation–into Hillary–in 2016

I’m still working on my slow read of the DOJ IG Report on Carter Page. But I wanted to call attention to this footnote, which a few people have already noted.

We reviewed the text and instant messages sent and received by the Handling Agent, the co-case Handling Agent, and the SSA for this CHS, which reflect their support for Trump in the 2016 elections. On November 9, the day after the election, the SSA contacted another FBI employee via an instant messaging program to discuss some recent CHS reporting regarding the Clinton Foundation and offered that “if you hear talk of a special prosecutor .. .I will volunteer to work [on] the Clinton Foundation.” The SSA’s November 9, 2016 instant messages also stated that he “was so elated with the election” and compared the election coverage to “watching a Superbowl comeback.” The SSA explained this comment to the OIG by saying that he “fully expected Hillary Clinton to walk away with the election. But as the returns [came] in … it was just energizing to me to see …. [because] I didn’t want a criminal to be in the White House.”

On November 9, 2016, the Handling Agent and co-case Handling Agent for this CHS also discussed the results of the election in an instant message exchange that reads:

Handling Agent: “Trump!”

Co-Case Handling Agent: “Hahaha. Shit just got real.”

Handling Agent: “Yes it did.”

Co-Case Handling Agent: “I saw a lot of scared MFers on … [my way to work] this morning. Start looking for new jobs fellas. Haha.”

Handling Agent: “LOL”

Co-Case Handling Agent: “Come January I’m going to just get a big bowl of popcorn and sit back and watch.”

Handling Agent: “That’s hilarious!” [my emphasis]

The footnote appears in the discussion of an informant who had some sort of tie to Trump who offered up a bunch of documents without tasking. The documents got entered into FBI’s files and remained there when the IG did their review.

The passage has generally been noted to demonstrate that anti-Hillary case agents involved in related investigations used their FBI phones to engage in political speech, just like Peter Strzok and Lisa Page did.

But it says something more.

It pertains to FBI’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation — an investigation predicated (unlike the Trump one) on opposition research, the Steve Bannon-funded Clinton Cash. This is the investigation, of course, that Andrew McCabe confirmed for the Wall Street Journal, just weeks before the election.

The passage reveals that the FBI had actively tasked CHSes — that is, informants — as part of their investigation into one of the candidate’s Foundations. Mind you, this was reported in real time (including in that WSJ article). But you might think that, upon discovering that politically biased agents were tasking informants to collect on one of the candidates, the IG might take the time to investigate that.

There’s no indication that happened.

According to John Solomon (!!!), FBI reopened their investigation into the Clinton Foundation in early 2018.

OTHER POSTS ON THE DOJ IG REPORT

Overview and ancillary posts

DOJ IG Report on Carter Page and Related Issues: Mega Summary Post

The DOJ IG Report on Carter Page: Policy Considerations

Timeline of Key Events in DOJ IG Carter Page Report

Crossfire Hurricane Glossary (by bmaz)

Facts appearing in the Carter Page FISA applications

Nunes Memo v Schiff Memo: Neither Were Entirely Right

Rosemary Collyer Responds to the DOJ IG Report in Fairly Blasé Fashion

Report shortcomings

The Inspector General Report on Carter Page Fails to Meet the Standard It Applies to the FBI

“Fact Witness:” How Rod Rosenstein Got DOJ IG To Land a Plane on Bruce Ohr

Eleven Days after Releasing Their Report, DOJ IG Clarified What Crimes FBI Investigated

Factual revelations in the report

Deza: Oleg Deripaska’s Double Game

The Damning Revelations about George Papadopoulos in a DOJ IG Report Claiming Exculpatory Evidence

A Biased FBI Agent Was Running an Informant on an Oppo-Research Predicated Investigation–into Hillary–in 2016

The Carter Page IG Report Debunks a Key [Impeachment-Related] Conspiracy about Paul Manafort

The Flynn Predication

Sam Clovis Responded to a Question about Russia Interfering in the Election by Raising Voter ID

Judge Emmet Sullivan to Mike Flynn: You Sir, Are No Ted Stevens

Judge Emmet Sullivan just denied all of Mike Flynn’s efforts to blow up his plea deal. While it addresses his long list of demands one by one, even before he gets there, it’s clear he’s pretty fed up with this whole effort. Along the way, Sullivan accuses Flynn’s lawyer, Sidney Powell, of not ethically citing one of her sources.

The Court notes that Mr. Flynn’s brief in support of his first Brady motion lifted verbatim portions from a source without attribution. Compare Def.’s Br., ECF No. 109 at 11-12, 15-16, 15 n.21, with Brief of the New York Council of Defense Lawyers et al. as Amici Curiae Supporting Petitioner, Brown v. United States, 566 U.S. 970 (2012) (No. 11-783), 2012 WL 242906 at *5-6, *8, *12-13, *12 n.6. In a footnote, Mr. Flynn’s brief merely provides a hyperlink to the “excellent briefing by Amicus [sic] in support of the Petition for Writ of Certiorari in Brown v. United States.” Def.’s Br., ECF No. 109 at 16 n.22.

The District of Columbia Rules of Professional Conduct apply to the proceedings in this Court. See LCrR 57.26. Rule 8.4(c) provides that “[i]t is professional misconduct for a lawyer to . . . [e]ngage in conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation.” D.C. Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 8.4(c); see In re Ayeni, 822 A.2d 420, 421 (D.C. 2003) (per curiam) (lawyer’s plagiarized brief violated Rule 8.4(c)). “[C]itation to authority is absolutely required when language is borrowed.”

He also reminded Flynn that before he pled guilty the second time, he (Sullivan) engaged in a sworn colloquy to prevent precisely the kind of back-tracking on his plea Flynn has been engaged in since June.

On December 18, 2018, this Court accepted Mr. Flynn’s guilty plea a second time. Sentencing Hr’g Tr., ECF No. 103 at 5, 16. During that hearing, the Court extended the plea colloquy in view of Mr. Flynn’s statements in his sentencing memorandum, which raised questions as to whether Mr. Flynn sought to challenge the conditions of the FBI interview. See generally Def.’s Mem. in Aid of Sentencing, ECF No. 50 at 6-18. In response to the Court’s question, defense counsel did not express “any concerns that potential Brady material or other relevant material was not provided to [Mr. Flynn].” Sentencing Hr’g Tr., ECF No. 103 at 10. Defense counsel affirmed to this Court that Mr. Flynn was not entitled to any additional information. Id. at 10-11. Under oath, Mr. Flynn confirmed that his rights were not violated as a result of the circumstances of his January 24, 2017 FBI interview and the allegations of misconduct against FBI officials. Id. at 11-12. And Mr. Flynn declined the Court’s invitation for the appointment of independent counsel to advise him. Id. at 9-10.

But perhaps the worst sign of Sullivan’s frustration with this ploy comes way at the end of his order, where he says explicitly that Flynn’s case does not resemble that of Ted Stevens, even though Powell has tried to make that claim over and over.

This case is not United States v. Theodore F. Stevens, Criminal Action No. 08–231(EGS), the case that Mr. Flynn relies on throughout his briefing.

He even hints that if he had found Brady violations, all that would get Flynn would be a trial.

Even if Mr. Flynn established a Brady violation in this case, dismissal would be unwarranted because “[t]he remedy for a Brady violation is retrial, not dismissal.” United States v. Borda, 941 F. Supp. 2d 16, 19 n.1 (D.D.C. 2013) (citing Pettiford, 627 F.3d at 1228). “[D]ismissal is appropriate only as a last resort, where no other remedy would cure prejudice against a defendant.” Pasha, 797 F.3d at 1139.

Sullivan scheduled sentencing for January 28, just over a month away.

Flynn had better hope his continued efforts to piss off Sullivan cool off before then.

What Real Voters Think about Impeachment at Grand Rapids’ Brewery Vivant

Yesterday, Meet the Press did what it billed as a “focus group,” in one of five counties it predicts will decide the 2020 election (the full clip starts at 31:00). That county is Kent County, where I live. As a slew of outlets (including CJR) and individuals have noted, the sample of voters was irresponsibly unrepresentative of voters in this county. Yes, the county as a whole is very white, but the white Republicans included in the panel are far more affluent than the norm in the county (which has a median household income of $57,000).

Worse still, Meet the Press staged the “focus group” in my neighborhood brewpub, Brewery Vivant (though, predictably, none of the panelists were enjoying its superb beer), which is one of my local haunts.

What pissed me off the most is that Chuck Todd mispronounced the name of the brewery, “Vie-vant,” rather than “Vee-vant,” as if Todd has been stuck inside the Beltway for so long he doesn’t know what real life is like anymore.

And so I took matters into my own hands. With state political reporter Nick Manes and video from Carl Morrison, I decided to interview six totally random people at Brewery Vivant. To be sure, this panel is only somewhat more representative than NBC’s. The neighborhood is a liberal hotspot, even in the city as a whole, so all but one of the people we spoke with voted for Hillary in 2016. And while the people we interviewed weren’t as rich as the partner of the city’s largest law firm interviewed by Meet the Press, the neighborhood is still more affluent than the city or county. The neighborhood is predominantly white (though gets more diverse quickly just two blocks south). So these interviews aren’t meant to capture what swing voters think about impeachment or what a real cross-sample think, just what real people who could normally be found at Brewery Vivant think about it.

I’m going to post the six interviews without commentary, as I think all six offer thoughtful comment.

Chris

Nate

Jessica

Margaret

Kelly

Mark

The History of High Crimes and Misdemeanors

Ed. note: Longtime friend of the blog Cynthia Kouril moderated a CLE on impeachment. She wrote up this statement after the panel. She has given us permission to post her statement from that here.

For all of you out there wondering what “High Crimes & Misdemeanors” means and whether or not there has to be an ‘underlying crime’ let me help you out here.

Last week I moderated a CLE on Impeachment and you are welcome to the fruits of my labors on that topic.

A basic rule of legal interpretation is that you cannot define a legal term using information not yet in existence at the time the term was used. At the time the Constitution was debated and adopted, there was no federal criminal code, much less the US Code we have today. So, you cannot use anything in the current Code to define “High Crime & Misdemeanor”.

You have to use that term, and it is a legal ‘term of art’ as the phrase was understood when it was inserted into the Constitution. It is interesting to note that this phrase is ONLY used in connection with impeachment. Crimes in the criminal code are low crimes.

The term is first recorded in the impeachment of of the King’s Chancellor, Michael de la Pole, in 1386. One of the “High Crimes & Misdemeanors” de la Pole was charged with, was the failure to expend moneys appropriated by Parliament as the appropriation directed him to do, just like Trump withholding funds appropriated by Congress which was required to be given to Ukraine by a date in September. Contrary to the GOP’s claims, not all the Ukraine aide was committed in time and Congress had to do a second appropriation to restore the unspent money.

Not every impeachment in the next 400 years used this phrase, but in each instance where it was used, it was 1) only in the context of impeachment, and 2) referred to offenses that implicated either misuse of their office (including using their office for self enrichment) or failure to obey Parliament (basically a failure to observe separation of powers).

At the time the Constitution was being written and edited there was a famous impeachment trial going on involving the Viceroy of India. A Viceroy (“vice king”, ‘roi’ being french for king) is the representative of the crown in a way far more important than a governor. A British governor was subject to instruction from London, the Viceroy was imbued with the monarch’s own Majesty and ruled an entire country (such as Ireland or India) rather than an individual colony.

So, the impeachment of Warren Hastings ran from 1786 to 1795, while the Constitution was being debated and was the “trial of the century” of its day. Everybody talked about it. He was charged with “gross maladministration, corruption in office, and cruelty towards the people of India”.

At the time of Nixon’s impeachment Peter Rodino commissioned a staff report on the history of impeachment including the meaning of this phrase. The report which runs some 60 pages with footnotes and endnotes, is fascinating to read. It’s conclusion with respect to this term of art: “[t]wo points emerge from the 400 years of English parliamentary experience with the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors”. First, the particular allegations of misconduct alleged damages to the state in such forms as misapplication of funds, abuse of official power, neglect of duty, encroachment on Parliament’s prerogatives, corruption, and betrayal of trust. Second the phrase “high Crimes and Misdemeanors” was confined to parliamentary impeachments; it had no roots in ordinary criminal law, and the particular allegations of misconduct under that heading were not necessarily limited to common law or statutory derelictions or crimes.”

I hope you find the above helpful.

Update: I updated the intro to make it clear that Kouril moderated, did not put together, the CLE, and this contribution was written afterwards. 

A Diverse America Votes to Uphold the Constitution; A Largely Male White America Votes to Abrogate It

The House Judiciary Committee just voted to send two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump to the full House.

The entire vote took just minutes. But it said so much about the state of America today.

It will forever be portrayed as a party line vote, with 23 Democrats in favor, and 17 Republicans against. But it was also a tribute to the degree to which polarization in America today pivots on issues of diversity.

The Democrats who voted in favor included 11 women, and 13 Latinx and people of color (Ted Lieu missed the vote recovering from a heart procedure). Three (plus Lieu) are immigrants. One is gay. These Democrats voted to uphold the Constitution a bunch of white men, several of them owners of African-American slaves, wrote hundreds of years ago.

The Republicans who voted against were all white. Just two were women.  These Republicans voted to permit a racist white male President to cheat to get reelected in violation of the rule of law.

This is about a clash between the rising America and the past. And it’s unclear who will win this battle for America. But the stakes are clear.

 

Trump “Cares” about Corruption in Ukraine because It Ensures Paul Manafort Will Keep His Secrets

On August 2, 2016, Donald Trump’s campaign manager took a break from his campaign work for a secret meeting with his former employee, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik first pitched the meeting on 10:51AM on July 29 after meeting in person in Moscow with Viktor Yanukovych, explaining that, “It has to do about the future of [Yanukovych’s] country, and is quite interesting.” Paul Manafort accepted the meeting that same day, saying Tuesday was the best day for it. After Kilimnik returned to Ukraine on July 31, he told Manafort he needed two hours for the meeting and would arrive at JFK at 7:30 PM on August 2 for the meeting.

At the meeting, Manafort and Kilimnik discussed three things. First, they discussed a plan to make “peace” in Ukraine by creating an autonomous region in Donbas and getting Yanukovych “elected” to head it. Manafort later told Mueller’s team that he cut the meeting short before Kilimnik asked him to get Trump to come out for the peace plan, though Mueller’s team argued and Amy Berman Jackson agreed that Manafort was lying about what happened at the meeting.

After Rick Gates showed up (he came late), Manafort laid out for Kilimnik how the campaign planned to win Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.

Finally, Kilimnik told Manafort how he could get back on the gravy train of Oleg Deripaska and the Party of Regions. Specifically, Kilimnik explained what Manafort would have to do to get Ukrainian oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Serhiy Lyovochkin to pay him money that Manafort claimed they owed him from past work. Eight days later, on August 10, Manafort — who was badly underwater and working for Trump for “free” — would tell his accountant to book $2.4M in income from those oligarchs, to be paid in November.

This recognition of payment from Yanukovych’s allies just a week after meeting to talk about a way to help Yanukovych do Russia’s bidding is the only known instance of Ukraine interfering with people working directly for one of the candidates running for President. It is the only known instance of Ukrainian interference in 2016.

In early January, Manafort would meet with a senior Deripaska associate in a meeting set up by another Deripaska associate sanctioned along with a bunch of GRU officers to “recreat[e] old friendship” between Deripaska and Manafort.

Shortly thereafter (possibly the day he returned, on January 12), Manafort reportedly told Reince Priebus to undercut claims that Trump had close ties to Russia by debunking the Steele dossier, a strategy that — because the dossier turned out to be largely shit and possible disinformation — turned out to be wildly successful. As the DOJ IG Report describes in new detail, Christopher Steele had been working for Deripaska in an effort to help the oligarch settle his score with Manafort during the period he was working on the dossier.

From that point forward, Manafort would continue to pursue a “peace” plan in Ukraine that would give Russia what it wanted up until shortly before he was jailed in June 2018.

These are the events that about which Paul Manafort lied to prevent Mueller from fully understanding. To give Manafort an incentive to lie, John Dowd started telling him he would be “taken care of” in early 2018. Then, around the time he faced jail, Trump started making those pardon offers more explicit.

On June 15, 2018, the day the judge presiding over Manafort’s D.C. case was considering whether to revoke his bail, the President said that he “felt badly” for Manafort and stated, “I think a lot of it is very unfair.” And when asked about a pardon for Manafort, the President said, “I do want to see people treated fairly. That’s what it’s all about.” Later that day, after Manafort’s bail was revoked, t.he President called it a ” tough sentence” that was “Very unfair!” Two days later, the President’s personal counsel stated that individuals involved in the Special Counsel’s investigation could receive a pardon ” if in fact the [P]resident and his advisors .. . come to the conclusion that you have been treated unfairly”-using language that paralleled how the President had already described the treatment of Manafort.

These details — about what really happened in that meeting on August 2, 2016 and what Manafort did afterwards — are some of the things that Trump successfully obstructed the Mueller investigation in an effort to cover up.

And around the time Mueller publicly announced that Manafort had breached his plea deal by lying about all these things, Rudy Giuliani launched the campaign that would ultimately lead to getting the anti-corruption Ambassador in Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, fired, then would subsequently lead Trump to demand (in the same call while attacking Mueller) that the newly elected anti-corruption President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, gin up investigations into his opponents Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. Rudy conducted that campaign, significantly, while consulting Manafort in prison, and the effort is, at least in part, an effort to give Trump an excuse to pardon Manafort so Manafort will continue to remain silent about what really happened.

The Republican Party spent the entire day yesterday claiming that Donald Trump demanded those investigations out of concern for corruption in Ukraine. The Republican Party claimed, with a straight face, that the man who obstructed an investigation into what his own campaign manager did to get the pro-corruption pro-Russian party in Ukraine to pay him $2.4 million while he worked for Trump for “free,” opposed corruption in Ukraine.

This is the story the Democrats need to lay out over the next several weeks. The Republicans don’t much care that their arguments are transparently ridiculous. They care about defending a process that, at least in part, is an effort to make sure Paul Manafort never tells the truth about what happened in 2016.

While Republicans Continue to Claim Collusion Didn’t Happen, George Papadopoulos Labeled Roger Stone’s Actions as Treason

As part of its claim that the FBI withheld exculpatory information in Carter Page’s FISA application, the DOJ IG Report described George Papadopoulos’ interactions with Stefan Halper in mid-September 2016. When Halper twice asked Papadopoulos, “whether help ‘from a third party like Wikileaks for example or some other third party like the Russians, could be incredibly helpful’ in securing a campaign victory,” Papadopoulos categorically denied the campaign would reach out to WikiLeaks.

Well as a campaign, of course, we don’t advocate for this type of activity because at the end of the day it’s, ah, illegal. First and foremost it compromises the US national security and third it sets a very bad precedence [sic] …. So the campaign does not advocate for this, does not support what is happening. The indirect consequences are out of our hands…. [F]or example, our campaign is not. .. engag[ing] or reaching out to wiki leaks or to the whoever it is to tell them please work with us, collaborate because we don’t, no one does that…. Unless there’s something going on that I don’t know which I don’t because I don’t think anybody would risk their, their life, ah, potentially going to prison over doing something like that. Um … because at the end of the day, you know, it’s an illegal, it’s an illegal activity. Espionage is, ah, treason. This is a form of treason …. I mean that’s why, you know, it became a very big issue when Mr. Trump said, “Russia if you’re listening …. ” Do you remember? … And you know we had to retract it because, of course, he didn’t mean for them to actively engage in espionage but the media then took and ran with it.

When asked a second time, Papadopoulos called that “collusion.”

No one’s looking to … obviously get into trouble like that and, you know, as far as I understand that’s, no one’s collaborating, there’s been no collusion and it’s going to remain that way. [my emphasis]

When Papadopoulos has described this previously, he claimed he also denied having anything to do with Russia. If he did, it would be a lie. The very dates he was in London meeting with Halper, Papadopoulos had intended to conduct a secret meeting with Russia, something he failed to fully explain to Mueller. Even two weeks later, Papadopoulos was sharing an anti-sanction column in the Russian site Interfax with Joseph Mifsud.

It’s unclear whether Papadopoulos really believed that the campaign was not and would not coordinate with WikiLeaks. The most likely person he would have told that Russia planned to drop emails on Hillary back in April 2016 would be Stephen Miller, whom he emailed the day after learning of the emails and said, “Have some interesting messages coming in from Moscow about a trip when the time is right.” According to Rick Gates’ testimony at Roger Stone’s trial, Miller was one of several people with whom he brainstormed months later on how to optimize the WikiLeaks releases.

Q. Without saying what they said, who was involved in those brainstorming sessions about what to do if information was leaked?

A. Sure. It was Mr. Manafort; myself; Mr. Jason Miller, who was our director of communications; and Mr. Stephen Miller, who was our director of policy at the time.

According to the DOJ IG Report, the investigation team believed Papadopoulos had rehearsed his answer to Halper (and indeed, the Mueller Report makes clear that in the wake of Trump’s “Russia, are you listening” comment, everyone but Manafort stopped pursuing previous plans to reach out to Russia).

Case Agent 1 told the OIG that Papadopoulos’s “response to the direct questions seemed weird” to the Crossfire Hurricane team because it “seemed rehearsed and almost rote.” Case Agent 1 added that at these points in the conversation, Papadopoulos “went from a free-flowing conversation with [Source 2] to almost a canned response. You could tell in the demeanor of how [Papadopoulos] changed his tone, and to [the Crossfire Hurricane team] it seemed almost rehearsed.”

Whether or not he lied about knowing about “collusion,” which he defined to include reaching out to WikiLeaks, Papadopoulos defined doing so as treason. He’s wrong, but that is, apparently, what he said.

And less than a month ago, the government laid out evidence that Roger Stone had attempted to reach out to WikiLeaks via cut-outs, including Jerome Corsi. At the trial, the government did not disclose how Corsi and Stone had learned of the John Podesta emails in advance, but Stone invented yet a new cover story for the trial to continue to deny that he had done so, this time that Corsi had been lying about obtaining such information, just like Credico.

Absent a pardon, Stone is headed to prison because he refused to reveal what really happened in July and August 2016.

And whatever it is that Stone is hiding, what’s clear is he definitely tried to reach out to WikiLeaks, something that Papadopoulos claimed to consider treason.

Stone did so with the enthusiastic encouragement of Donald Trump.

During the impeachment “debate,” Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee just repeated over and over that the Mueller Report showed no “collusion.” But the facts show that, at least according to Papadopoulos’ definition, it did.

As I disclosed last year, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. 

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